Date: Mon, 02 Dec 1996 15:13:30 GMT
Server: NCSA/1.4.2
Content-type: text/html

<HTML>
<head>
<title>CSE567 Announcements</title>

</head>

<body bgcolor="#dddddd"  text="#000000"  link="#0000ee" vlink="501080"
alink="ff0000">

<h1>CSE 567: Principles of Digital Systems Design </h1>
<h3>Carl Ebeling, Fall 1996 </h2>

<hr>
<b>Nov. 1</b>
<ul>
<li><b>Homework 4, Problem 3.</b>  You may assume that exactly one
"last" bits is asserted, and that there is an initial "last" bit at
the very beginning of the circuit.  (In general, you may make
"reasonable" assumptions when you feel the problem spec is incomplete
or ambiguous.  Deciding which assumptions to make is part of design.)
</ul>

<b>Oct. 31</b>
<ul>
<li><b>Homework 4, Problem 7.  </b>Reset and Start are the same signal.
I changed names in the middle of writing the problem.
</ul>

<b>Oct. 28</b>
<ul>
<li>There's a new note on doing homework in the homework web page.
<li>You are to work together as teams on Homework 4.  Please look at
the problems individually first and sketch possible solutions and
questions.  Then meet together and formulate solutions to each if you
can, and assign the writeup to one or more team members.  Then meet
again to collate and review your solutions before you hand them in.
The whole team is responsible for understanding the solution to all
problems.
<li><B>Homework 4, Problem 7</b> The problem has been changed to
adding 8-bit numbers.  Also, you may make reasonable assumptions when
you design this circuit, provided they are reasonable and you explain
what they are.
</ul>

<b>Oct. 25</b>
<ul>
<li><b>Timing optimization.</b>There are four delay paths that have
to be considered when optimizing the timing of a circuit.  (We will cover registers soon.)
<ol>
  <li>Register to register path delay.  The clock period constrains this.
  <li>Input to register path delay.
  <li>Register to output path delay.
  <li>Input to output delay.  (This is all there is for a
  combinational circuit.)
</ol>
The timing constraints for the last three delay paths must be
specified explicitly.
</ul>

<b>Oct. 25</b>
<ul>
<li>If you run into trouble, don't hesitate to fire off an email msg to me or
the TAs, preferably all three.  One or the other of us is logged in for
most of the 24 hours/day and we can probably save you time.  We know that
you won't ask questions that can be easily answered by looking at a
handout. 

<LI>The cse567 mailing list is for all to use - you can post questions
to the class if you like, and more important you might want to post hints
or suggestions, although we'd rather you vet these through us to avoid the
generation of tool rumors and superstitions.  Unfortunately, we don't all
share a lab where information and ideas flow freely, but the email list is
a substitute. 
</ul>

<b>Oct. 15</b>
<ul>
<li><b>Homework 2 clarification:</b><P>

We will count the cost of a circuit as a) the number of gates and then
b) the number of gate inputs.  ie. we minimuze the number of gates
first and then the number of inputs.  And we assume negations are free.
<P>
It turns out that the cost of a gate (number of transistors) is
directly proportional to the number of inputs, but the delay generally
increases as n^2.  And it gets worse - increasing the fanout of a
signal, ie. the number of places it is used, also increases the delay.
So large fanin (number of gate inputs) and fanout (number of places
gate output is used) are bad.

</ul>

<b>Oct. 14</b>
<ul>
<li><b>Homework 2:</b> Replace problem 2 with the following problem:<p>
Find the minimal sum-of-products form for:<p>

SUM m(0,1,2,3,6,7,8,9,10,12,13,14) + d(5,15)

</ul>

<b>Oct. 7</b>
<ul>
<li><b>Homework 1</b> problem 1 has been changed slightly.  Check out
the online homework Web page.
</ul>

<b>Oct. 4</b>
<ul>
<li><b>Room Change</b> to Loew 201. 
</ul>

<b>Oct. 3</b>
<ul>
<li><b>Extra Handouts</b> are available on top of the file cabinet in
the hall outside my door.  I will continue to leave extras out there.
<blink><li><b>Email addresses.</b> Please send me email containing an http
pointer to your home Web page.  If you don't have a Web page, this is
the time to make one!</blink>
<li><b>No quiz this Friday (10/4)</b>
</ul>

<b>Sept. 25</b>
<ul>
<li><b>Welcome</b> to CSE 567.  Announcements will be posted here as needed.
</ul>

</body>
<address>
<hr>
ebeling@cs.washington.edu
</address>
<p>
</html>

